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The New York Times on Tuesday continued to grow its virtual reality offerings by launching The Daily 360, a daily series of 360-degree videos.The first video is a minute-long look inside the rubble of a social hall in Sana, Yemen that was destroyed in a Saudi airstrike.

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The New York Times is sending out a million Google Cardboards to go with its upcoming VR films
October 20, 2015. The Times began its push into virtual reality last year when it launched its NYT VR app and sent out a million Google Cardboard headsets to Sunday print subscribers. Last December, the Times produced its first entirely in-house VR project, and this spring its graphics and science desks produced their first VR film. For The Daily 360, the Times is partnering with Samsung, which gave the Times the equipment to produce the videos. In a note at the bottom of its introductory post, the Times wrote, “Times journalists have been provided with Samsung Gear 360 cameras and equipment to use while reporting out in the field,” and the credits of the initial video also identify that the technology came from the company. Samsung will also publish The Daily 360 videos on its own platforms ...»

But in both of those cases, you would probably only see those videos if you first thought to search for them. Facebook’s News Feed is used by upwards of 1 billion people every month, representing 360-video’s best chance so far to reach a large audience and break through to the mainstream.

Perhaps that’s why, as I meet with members of the Facebook team, they speak of 360-degree video with outsized enthusiasm. "There are certain things that, when you hold them in your hands for the first time, they attract a crowd," says Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer. "People come to tell you they just saw it, and you have to see it. There aren’t that many of those. This is one of them."
Will Cathcart, a director of product management, says the videos represent the next logical step for the News Feed. Text led to photos, which led to video, which led to autoplay video. "Over time we’ve seen the modes of sharing shift to become more mobile, and more immersive," he says. "Here what we’ve done is look at all the really cool 360-degree video content people are creating and think through, what’s the right way to bring that experience to News Feed." ...»

‘if you put all those together, it feels like The Economist,’ says Standage. Over the next year, theeconomist plans to produce vr documentaries and a daily video feature that will be two to five
minutes long and will be branded espresso tv. ...»

Livestreaming isn’t just popular: It also lies smack in the middle of the contradictions that accompany a highly politicized spectacle like Ferguson in the age of social media. It’s protest as reality show, or maybe reality show as protest. It offers hours of unvarnished footage that seems more authentic than cable news, but live-streamers tend to be so closely linked to the movements they cover that they become protagonists in the story they tell. And to some of the live-streamers’ dismay, their success at raising the profile of their issue attracts the very forces of Establishment media (with its attendant narrative-shaping and sound-bite-seeking) whom they believe it’s their mission to counteract. ...»

Social media is allowing the audience and “the people formerly known as sources” to report themselves. For example, the Fire Department in New York City used a live video stream on their website to broadcast the rescue efforts following the recent Hudson River air collision live from a helicopter, allowing visitors to the site to comment via chat next to the feed. They had more than 300 viewers watching and chatting as the news unfolded and often times those viewers had the news first. They were, after all, the source that a lot of the other media outlets were getting their information from. ...»

There will be a huge push to monetize live streaming, but social won’t be the only player in this space. Expect to see live streaming proliferate across the digital landscape, resulting in battles between platforms and their publisher partners to control everything from ad formats to revenue splits. - See more at: https://www.emarketer.com/Report/US-Social-Trends-2017-eMarketers-Predictions-Attribution-Live-Streaming-Messaging-Influencer-Marketing-More/2001920#sthash.jzZ3PwoE.dpuf ...»

The first upcoming update is the ability to stream a broadcast with two people in different locations — sort of like a remote interview. Essentially, you can invite a friend to “drop in” on your broadcast and join the conversation. Mark Zuckerberg hinted at this during his Live Q&A last week, noting that it would be cool if he could have different guests and celebrities participate remotely in his Live videos. The ability to stream with a friend will let content creators incorporate things like remote interviews and duets into their live videos, which will greatly expand the creative possibilities offered by the platform. This feature will go live later this summer, starting with Verified Pages, then roll out to other users. ...»

Last July, The Washington Post launched a live video channel that its president proclaimed would be “the ESPN of politics.” Instead, PostTV turned out to be more like a public access show. Within five months, the live content had vanished and the “channel” became little more than a clearinghouse for pre-taped video packages and recycled press briefing footage, along with the occasional original report. What the Post learned in its video flop in 2013 is what The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and other large news organizations had discovered in years prior: Creating quality live television is expensive — the Post invested millions of dollars and dozens of staffers to Post TV — and much harder than it looks. The end result didn’t interest readers — or advertisers. ...»

Posttv was an early foray into video in 2013 with a live channel that aimed to be the ‘ESPN of politics’ (calderone, 2013). with the project burning cash and failing to meet targets, the Washington Post pivoted its strategy in September 2015, rebranding its efforts washington Post video and
investing in shorter content for various platforms while abandoning the longform
shows. the new washington Post video team, led by Micah gelman,
consists of 40 people, all embedded in different newsroom sections and part of the commissioning
process of a story from the start. ten of them are video reporters who go out on assignment, with
the rest managers and video editors. the team produces content customised for each of the different platforms they are on. Stories for Facebook, for example, have text overlay and are designed to work without sound. ‘we are thinking of each platform as a unique ecosystem and not
trying to force one type of content down the line,’ says gelman.
15 ...»

After looking widely, he said, he decided Chorus was the best option. “It was so obvious and where we needed to go,” he said. “From a storytelling perspective it couldn’t be accomplished in any other place that I have seen.”Others are catching up, but the rich graphic interface and facile reader interaction have helped Vox earn a reputation for quality and attract a highly desirable audience: its largest demographic is educated households headed by individuals under 35 years old with incomes over $100,000. Perhaps more important for its long-term survival, Vox’s formats attract attention directly, so the site does not have to turn to gimmicky features like quizzes, teasing headlines or lists to generate traffic through Facebook or Twitter. The company’s attitude toward content management has its roots in the basement of Trei Brundrett, now Vox’s chief product officer. It was there that he and some partners developed SB Nation, a sports blogging website that became wildly popular when it was introduced nine years ago. Mr. Brundrett and his crew cast themselves as equal parts journalists and software developers. ...»

“The way this person knew Vox was as a YouTube brand,” Klein told me. “When he saw that someone was taking our videos and making them viral on Facebook and it wasn’t Vox, he was honestly upset.” The anecdote goes to show that the Vox brand means different things to different people, and “explainer website launched by Washington Post wunderkind Ezra Klein” is probably not the most common. “There are a lot of different Voxes,” Klein said. “Vox.com, the core site, is an important one, and a central one, but it isn’t the only one, and I’ve come to really believe that we need to value the YouTube following, the Facebook video following, the Snapchat following equally.” That means thinking of videos as pieces that can stand on their own, not “the way to slightly better monetize an article page,” Klein said. When Vox.com launched two years ago, none of its founders had much video experience. The video division began as a team of one: multimedia director Joe Posner, whom Klein had met at a conference. “What Vox video is, is almost entirely due to Joe,” Klein said. The team has now grown to 11 full-time employees in New York, San Francisco, and Washington. ...»

If you aren’t particularly tapped into what young people are sharing on Facebook, the fact that social news startup NowThis landed an interview with President Obama on Wednesday might have come as a surprise. It shouldn’t. The interview, which has already been packaged into 5 bite-sized videos (with more on the way), is just the most recent step in NowThis’ bid to dominate news video on social networks like Facebook, according to the company’s president, Athan Stephanopoulos.
The presidential race has been a moment in the spotlight for NowThis, whose election coverage videos alone have snagged a whopping two billion views. ...»

Vox.com is wary of producing videos that feel too much like cable. “I made one rule starting out: no desks,” Posner said. A person sitting behind a desk talking, he thinks, is “one of those tropes of cable news that made their way into other news’ organizations’ first attempts at online video” and in many cases remains (you’ll see it all over Facebook Live videos, too). Posner has also steered the team away from interviews (with a few notable exceptions, like President Obama): “There’s usually no reason to watch an interview. It’s better in text or as a podcast. ...»

early newspaper investment focused on producing tv-style programming rather than adopting a
native approach to online video. the Washington Post, the New York Times, Spiegel, the Wall
Street Journal, and the Financial Times set up tv studios and many launched regular video shows
and broadcast programmes. ‘at the beginning, we just made the mistake everybody does with
that: we just took tv and put it into the internet, but it doesn't work like that,’ admits Sven
christian12 from Spiegel. Most newspapers have since changed strategy, with the majority
downplaying tv-style production for a broader set of approaches that encompass short-form
news, social video, documentaries, and immersive storytelling such as virtual reality (vr).
Significant challenges have emerged around the hiring of journalists with the right skills, the
organisation of teams, and around the need to adapt the newsroom workflow to include video in
the commissioning process right from the start. the Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Post, Die Welt, and The Economist represent how differently legacy print organisations
engage with the challenges of learning to create, package, and distribute news video. ...»

the Guardian runs a team of more than 30 people working in london, New York and Sydney, reflecting new editor Kath viner’s strong interest in developing new forms of storytelling. the heart of the operation is providing news to illustrate and embed in web pages: ‘everyone at the bare minimum expects video now,’ says christian bennett, the Guardian’s global Head of
video. ‘if david cameron says something, people want to see david cameron saying that and
judge for themselves how he said that.’ beyond news, which is largely sourced from agencies, the
team produces one or two explainers each day and then original features that might involve
Guardian journalists shooting footage and take more time and resources. recent examples include
a series on politics beyond the westminster bubble by John Harries and John domokos and
Shakespeare solos, beautifully shot extracts from plays, read by famous actors. these may not
make money but do help build an identity that matches the values of the wider brand. ...»

the video team at the Wall Street Journal is fully embedded with reporting desks in New York, San Francisco, washington, Hong Kong, and london. The team has video journalists as well as video editors and producers. Wall Street Journal reporters who find themselves in a breaking news situation are expected to shoot video directly from their phones, but in most cases
the video desk works on a planned schedule. in terms of formats, short videos are among those
that work best for the Wall Street Journal. ‘we've gotten away from long-form documentary style
storytelling,’ says global Head of video, andy regal. ‘in the digital space, we find that people are
more inclined to want to be seeing things in shorter durations.’ 14 the Wall Street Journal video content is distributed among more than 30 platforms with all content on-site in front of the paywall because of the higher advertising premiums. the paper has recently been experimenting with different formats and it was the first US newspaper to join Snapchat discover in January 2016. the
Wall Street Journal is among those organisations that saw the potential of video early and has
made a strategic and long-term investment. ...»

Many of our interviewees cited aJ+, founded in September 2014, as a source of inspiration when it comes to online video. aJ+ is a digital spin-off from al Jazeera, focusing on building audiences through social platforms rather than investing in their own apps and websites. the content is created to be short, shareable, and mobile-first. by January 2016, aJ+ employed 70 people in their content team producing around 50 videos a week, most of which are around a minute long or less (digiday, 2015b). through Facebook alone, aJ+ delivered 2.2 billion video views in 2015, around half of which were 30-second views. they currently produce between ten and 12 videos a day for Facebook: ‘we are creating content for each individual platform and thinking about the user experience in each platform, based on [the fact] that it optimises the product and the experience,’ explained executive Producer, Michael Shagoury. 27 all the videos produced by aJ+ come from a mix of agency footage, original material, and user-generated content. ...»

The team will create news videos optimized for social platforms, but BuzzFeed also wants to make video work better on its own properties. It’s redesigning its homepage and news app to allow for direct video playback. Hilton said BuzzFeed wanted to wait to focus on news video until it could “finally do it in a way that’s not boring.” “I think we all know that the two-shot, where you have one person interviewing another person on camera, does not work,” Hilton said. “Figuring out any other kind of format is the goal here.”There’s a business imperative to the video push as well. Last month, the Financial Times reported that BuzzFeed had missed its 2015 financial targets and cut its 2016 revenue target in half, from $500 million to $250 million. BuzzFeed denied the report. Regardless, there’s strong demand from advertisers for video spots. Thirty-five percent of BuzzFeed’s revenue was derived from video in the fourth quarter of 2015, up from 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014. ...»

Getting length right is vital for finding and retaining online viewers, who are increasingly using mobile devices to access news websites. Marie-Noelle Valles, Head of Video at AFP, echoed the prevailing wisdom that videos should be short to appeal to those on the move. But she also told WEF that while short might be the way to attract viewers initially, this does not mean long-format should be ignored: “It doesn’t mean these people will not return to longer formats, because they remain interesting and relevant, but the point of entry is a short, agile, quick video.” It appears that there is no ‘magic length’ that people like: it’s true that short, funny clips are more likely to go viral, but in-depth documentaries should not be ignored. Some of the organisations interviewed for the Tow report talked about the value of ‘letting it run long’. ...»

In 2016, the Albany Times Union made a commitment to refocus on their subscribers. They did that by offering Thursday through Sunday and/or Sunday-only print delivery as primary options. The strategy was a success, securing an additional 5,067 new Thursday through Sunday and Sunday-only print starts versus the previous year. In addition, the paper limited discounted offers to 50 percent with limited exceptions through the year. According to circulation sales and marketing manager Brad Hunt, this move also countered past programs offering heavy introductory discounts which resulted in higher churn and/or downgrades. “As consumers continue to downsize their subscriptions to fit into a busier and more digital audience, this change in tactics presented the consumer with flexibility,” he said. Vice president of circulation Todd Peterson said he and Hunt set the table for this plan in 2015 with the goal to reduce subscription stops in 2016. The paper partnered with Leap Media Solutions to analyze data numbers in order to adopt more efficient retention and engagement touch points. As a result, starts increased by 7 percent and stops decreased by 18 percent, giving the paper a net gain of more than 1,200 starts over stops for the year. ...»

After a companywide reorganization in 2014, Orlando Sentinel interactive and visuals manager Todd Stewart thought it was time for the newspaper to dive deeper into video. That’s when the company decided to make radical changes to the department. Without eliminating any jobs, Stewart said they became “video first.” They equipped their videographers with mobile video kits, which include an iPad, a tripod and a microphone to capture breaking news and to make it easier to upload to the news site immediately.

“The first few months were a little bumpy, but we learned and grew along the way,” said Stewart.

That growth resulted in a 95 percent increase in video views year-over-year. They now upload about 10 to 15 videos each day and produce a webcast with the local Fox affiliate TV station called “Orlando News Now.” The five-day-a-week webcast shares stories from the paper, interviewing reporters and guests while covering daily news topics. Building on that success, the Sentinel also invested in live backpack equipment, which allows the paper to compete with local television stations covering events such as press conferences and NBA games. The backpack is the same one used by TV stations, said Stewart. “(We’re) among the very first newspaper companies to own one…We were immediately beating TV at its own game,” he said. “Some people are surprised to see the Orlando Sentinel doing what we’re doing. We’re opening some eyes. They’re live at 5 o’clock, but we’re live online now.” ...»

Many newspapers have also been revising content in order to target a more specific—and generally younger—audience. The prevalent assumption has been that the general population wants their news delivered in bite sized packages and given the larger lack of editorial resources, the Associated Press, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal have all explicitly told their reporters to write shorter stories within the past year and a half.

“We were told to make stories shorter [and] pay attention to what is hot on social media,” Bowles said. “We were writing about Justin Bieber in a way we never were before. We were covering things that only kids cared about and that was now driving news.”

News organizations have repeatedly dictated that the future of journalism is bleak. They attribute this to the continual dumbing down stories in order to interest a population with an ever-shrinking attention span. But in reality, the demand for in depth reporting remains the same. The only change is that innovation is the key for newspapers to remain relevant in today’s technologically savvy world. Though different audiences may have different preferences, the demand for in depth reporting remains the same.
“People are also reading longer stories particularly with the development of the tablet. While there is a lot [of content] in mobile and social that is short there is also a place there for longer kinds of news reporting. Whether it is read on the tablet [or through] a link they share in social media, that kind of news can exist and have an audience as well,” Mitchell said. ...»

Vice has 4.5 million non-paying subscribers who get regular updates from Vice’s YouTube channel, and it boasts some remarkable engagement statistics. One of its most popular videos, ‘Suicide Forest in Japan’, has almost 8 million views, 83,000 likes and 2,000 dislikes. When Vice dipped into shorter, “viral” clips, there was a backlash in reader comments. Mojica says his customers complained the viral videos were “bullshit”. ...»

The Economist has been experimenting with video for many years, but has only recently found a strategy that works from an editorial and commercial point of view. One key question for executives was whether video should be a complementary ‘side-salad’ to the text article or a ‘video-version’ of it. Eventually they realised it doesn’t have to be either: ‘it doesn’t have to be related to the print product in any way,’ says deputy editor, tom Standage. ‘it doesn’t have to bederived from it. it can just be what it is. So the first thing was breaking the link with the weekly
[newspaper].’ 17 Now, there is a single video unit which is a merger of the team behind economist
Films – 15-minute mini-documentaries with high production values – and a team focused on short
explainers made for social media. another important aspect of The Economist’s approach to video was to find its own distinctive voice. their video is presenter-less, global, comparative, data-driven, and with a little bit of humour. ...»

I don’t know that all the answers are going to be in features, but I’ll use video. Let’s use video. When I first became managing editor, I foolishly looked at video as this new thing that we were doing — that I guess we have to do video to make money. It is unimaginable to me that The New York Times would not have video now. I now have video ideas. I’m as much of a pain in the ass to the video department as I am to foreign.

Baquet now leads a newsroom of about 1,300. It’s seen buyouts and layoffs, but its trimmings pale in comparison with dailies overall. As it has reduced cost and workforce, the Times also has “reskilled,” with complements of data science, audience, video, and visuals staffing tucked in here and there. This isn’t the 2006 Times, and we have a good notion that it won’t be the 2026 Times. ...»

In 1994, I sold a company I had formed called Video News International to the New York Times Company. It became New York Times Television. My original idea was that we would create a video news business. But Joe Lelyveld, who ran the paper, cut us off from the news and the newsroom.
So, instead, we discovered Reality TV. We began to produce shows like Trauma, Life in the ER for cable companies like TLC. And in a few years, we were producing a LOT of shows. For a lot of cable channels. In fact, NY Times TV became the largest non-fiction TV production company on the East Coast, producing lots of revenue for the paper. But the paper didn’t need lots of revenue in those days. in fact, when TLC put up a building sized billboard promoting Trauma, Life in the ER on the side of a building in Times Square, the paper nearly threw up. They used to call us “Pariah Pictures.” They were mortified by what we had done. The “blatant commercialism” offended them deeply.
The people who ran the paper were journalism purists. The could not conceive of their name, let alone their resources, being used to make money. Journalists have a long time aversion to the dirty business of actually making money. As AJ Liebling wrote — the purpose of the journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Actually making a profit does not sit well with that view of one’s own profession. But all the pieces are there to save the papers and make them very profitable again. But it isn’t in the paper. And it isn’t really in the news. But it is in the building.
If only they could see it. And do something before it is too late. ...»

"We decided to put boots on the ground to report and illustrate the stories [Gates talked about] and the people that are actually driving that change, and take our audiences in places where they may not go themselves." Ever since it launched in 2014, Digital Studios has produced a range of web series, such as City of Tomorrow, Street food with Roy Choi and Pixel on CNN Style, and Kemp said they will continue to invest in this format in the coming year."The content we create in Digital Studios is very story-based, and what we are trying to do is go deeper into stories and tell narratives that people will want to come back to and consume again." ...»

Getting length right is vital for finding and retaining online viewers, who are increasingly using mobile devices to access news websites. Marie-Noelle Valles, Head of Video at AFP, echoed the prevailing wisdom that videos should be short to appeal to those on the move. But she also told WEF that while short might be the way to attract viewers initially, this does not mean long-format should be ignored: “It doesn’t mean these people will not return to longer formats, because they remain interesting and relevant, but the point of entry is a short, agile, quick video.”
It appears that there is no ‘magic length’ that people like: it’s true that short, funny clips are more likely to go viral, but in-depth documentaries should not be ignored. Some of the organisations interviewed for the Tow report talked about the value of ‘letting it run long’. ...»

Facebook today is changing how it ranks the videos that appear in the News Feed, with the goal of better surfacing those that are more relevant to you. It’s a slight tweak, but one that could boost the visibility of longer videos, in some cases. It can be more of commitment to watch a longer video in full, of course – the content has to be interesting enough to keep your attention. Now, long videos that people are actually watching may be distributed more on Facebook. The company explains that “percent completion” – how much of a video is watched – is still just one of the signals it uses to determine which videos should show up in your News Feed. It also takes into account a number of other factors, like if you turn on the sound, go fullscreen, turn on high-def, among other things. And it considers whether or not a video is live. However, the percent completion signal needed an adjustment, Facebook found. After all, it’s a lot easier to watch a shorter video all the way through, compared with a long one. That’s why it makes sense to weight this percent completion signal a bit more, the longer the video is. ...»

This afternoon, BuzzFeed exploded a watermelon with rubber bands in a Facebook Live video titled “Watch us explode this watermelon one rubber band at a time!” You may have seen it.
According to Facebook, more people tuned in at the same time to watch it live than any other video. At its peak toward the end of its 45-minute runtime, the broadcast had 807,000 viewers all watching at the same time. That’s more people than live in Alaska, and just slightly fewer than live in San Francisco. Currently, the broadcast has more than 5 million total views. However, as Live broadcasts remain online after they air, that number will likely continue to rise. The video also garnered more than 315,000 comments. (BuzzFeed is among a group of Facebook Live paid media partners.) Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News, “We built this big technology platform so we can go and support whatever the most personal and emotional and raw and visceral ways people want to communicate are as time goes on.”
It’s true — watermelons are raw. ...»

However, while these stunts were some of the most memorable, they didn’t end up being the most watched Live videos. Facebook just released a list of the top 10 Live videos of the year, and none of these made the cut. The list includes a bit of variety, and to no surprise, a lot of content from the presidential election. ...»

The website of MediaStorm, a film production studio based in New York, is seeing thousands of views a day of documentaries it made several years ago. Founder Brian Storm told Tow, "...yeah it gets a lot of attention when it first comes out, but … years later. . .four or five thousand people a day are watching a story." One of the main recommendations of the Tow report is to produce “evergreen” work that users can come back to time and time again. Storm says, “There’s two things that are really successful in the space that we're in right now: being really, really funny -- cats spinning on a fan -- or the highest-quality thing that you've ever done on Darfur. Those are things that people tweet, those are the things people post on Facebook, right? The stuff in the middle, the volume, is noise.” ...»